Saturday, October 13, 2007

What's wrong with working your way up??

Friday's paper was mentioning about the 4th university, and how it should be different, and yet the same. However, I take offense on what the minister said about working your way up. He mentioned that the 4th university should not train "salaryman" who spends their whole life working their way up the corporate ladder.

What is wrong with working your way up? Working your way from the ground is the best way to learn and train yourself in the ropes. Whatever you learn in schools are only the very basic foundation of working life. The problem now with most jobs is that people are skipping levels.

For e.g., in software, people are designing software without being involved in the development process at all. They have absolutely no experience in developing an application, and yet they are managing one. And people wonder why projects have a high failure rate...

I mean even MM Lee has mentioned that to train the next PM, it takes more than 10 years. Why 10 years? Because he/she has to work their way up. Earn their stripes so as to speak.

Now a minister is saying this is not encouraged??? What the world is coming to? Am I going to meet more of these kind of people who know nothing of what they are managing??